Rasputin's Importance To History, Part 8, Rasputin's Death

Slightly edited and updated with a Word History October 18, 2014.

As conditions worsened throughout Russia, especially the food shortage in the cities, people in the nobility and the Romanov family began to plead with the Tsar to take action by sending Rasputin back to Siberia and sharing more power with the elected parliament, known in Russia as the "Duma." By sharing power, the feeling was that it would take some of the pressure off of the Tsar, as at the time, anything that went wrong was blamed on the Tsar and the government (And correctly!!! You can't have virtually all of the power and none or little of the blame when things go wrong.) There was also the plea for him to limit Alexandra's influence and involvement in governmental affairs, often with the suggestion of sending her to their summer vacation palace in the Crimea, "Livadia." The Tsar refused to act.

Likewise, some in the nobility and the Romanov family tried to get Alexandra to rid herself of Rasputin. Even her own sister, Ella,* visited to try to bring Alexandra to her senses, but without success. The two sisters parted, never to see one another again. A princess from one of the wealthiest families in Russia, the Yusupovs, came to see the Tsarina, only to be led out of her presence by a servant who was summoned by Alexandra once the princess even dared to mention that something had to be done about Rasputin.** The Tsarina told the princess that she hoped never to see her again, a wish that was fulfilled.

Met with inaction by the Tsar and the Tsarina, others began to plot to take matters into their own hands. Prince Felix Yusupov (who was married to the Tsar's niece), Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich Romanov (the Tsar's cousin, who had essentially been raised by Nicholas and Alexandra), and Vladimir Purishkevich, an ultra right wing zealot and politician, devised a plan to lure Rasputin to one of Yusupov's palaces in the capitol and to kill him there. In December 1916 they were able to implement their plan. I'm not going to go into all of the details, as just as with so many other things about Rasputin's life, the particulars about his death are also in question. Supposedly, the trio provided Rasputin with cakes and wine laced with poison (cyanide). The problem was, when Rasputin ate some of the cakes and drank some wine, he did not die, although he seemed to have some labored breathing. Here again, this whole situation has caused great debate. Did the conspirators use enough poison? Had the poison lost potency? (Hey, nothing worse than spoiled poison!) I'm not a scientist, but all joking aside, from what I understand, cyanide can indeed lose potency. When Hitler planned to commit suicide in 1945, he first tested the batch of cyanide he had on his dog to make sure it was effective, which it was. So, it seems that the cyanide used by the conspirators on Rasputin was not strong enough. At first, when they saw that Rasputin survived the poison, they truly began to believe that Rasputin was a holy devil, possessed by supernatural powers.

As time passed and Rasputin did not die, Prince Yusupov took a pistol and shot Rasputin, who fell to the floor, apparently dead. The prince ran up the stairs screaming to the other two conspirators who were waiting there, that he had killed Rasputin. Upon return to Rasputin's "corpse," he saw Rasputin move. Supposedly Rasputin spoke to him, threatening to tell the Tsarina the whole story as he made his way out of the palace. The other two conspirators, joined also by the prince, took shots at Rasputin. How many of these shots actually hit him, and where they hit his body, is again a detail that is debated. The trio claimed that Rasputin should have been dead, and that his survival showed his evil supernatural powers. They beat him until he was supposedly dead. His bound body was taken by car and dumped into the river. A few days later the body was discovered and supposedly an examination showed that Rasputin had still been alive when tossed into the icy water and that he had drowned. Supposedly he got loose from some of the rope used to tie his body and he made a sign of the cross as he died, with his partially frozen arm and hand still in that position when the body was recovered.*** Again, to the believers that Rasputin had evil supernatural powers, this only confirmed that he was a holy devil. The story is disputed by others, with some saying that he was indeed dead when dumped into the river, and others saying that while he did die by drowning, that the position of his arm and hand was simply his attempt to free himself from the rope and get to the surface. I guess you could say, "The devil is in the details." (Oh Randy, you're funny!) Regardless of the details, Rasputin was dead.

To be continued in the last part  ...

* Ella had been married to one of Nicholas's uncles, Sergei, a brother of Nicholas's father, who was assassinated many years before by revolutionaries (he was literally blown to pieces by a bomb). Ella eventually became a nun, and was such when she came to see her sister about Rasputin. Ella was killed by the Bolsheviks after the revolution, when they threw her and some others down a mine shaft while they were still alive! Grenades were tossed in afterward, but autopsies on the later recovered bodies suggested that some of the victims had died from wounds, but others died of starvation.

** Note that Alexandra referred to Rasputin as "our friend" when talking with or writing to her husband. She never called him "Rasputin." If I remember correctly, to others she frequently, but not necessarily always, referred to him as "Father Grigory."

*** All of this "seems" a bit far fetched to me, like something scripted for a movie, but I can't say some or all of it is untrue. There are photographs taken by the police of Rasputin's battered face and his raised arm, but whether he was making a sign of the cross I can't say.

WORD HISTORY:
Siberia-This word came to be applied to the Asian lands that gradually came under Russian control beginning in the late 1500s, with major expansion of Russian control thereafter. Its ultimate origin is unclear,^ but it goes back to the Tatar (also often "Tartar") occupation of what became an area in the southern part of western Siberia in the late 13th Century. The Tatars spoke (and speak) a Turkic language, and they still exist today, although there are strong dialects involved in the overall language now, as they didn't remain together, but rather split into groups settling in various regions of Siberia and European Russia. The Tatars called this settlement the Khanate of "Sibir." A Khanate is an area ruled by a Khan. Russian borrowed the word "Sibir," and it remained the name of that specific region, but expanded in geographic meaning along with the expansion of Russian control further into Asia. It "seems" English borrowed the word as "Siberia" in the earlier 1800s. Since European Russia was the center of the Russian Empire's power, political prisoners were often banished to Siberia by the Tsarist governments in the 1800s, as the area was generally very sparsely populated. During the Soviet Union era, the Soviets established labor camps (prisons) in Siberia for opponents and those suspected of being opponents, thus the Western European and American idea of "being sent to Siberia," likely the usage of the word most recalled by many English speakers. During the latter stages of World War Two, Nazi propaganda tried to frightened Germans into resisting the approaching Soviet armies with the slogan, "Sieg oder Sibirien" ("Victory or Siberia").  

^ A "possible" source is the combination of two old Turkic words, "su," which meant "water," and "beri" (or "biri"), which meant "wilds," in the sense "wilderness." The settlement of the Khanate of Sibir came at the junction of two rivers (later called the Tobol and Irtysh).